# Knowledge Check: Scheduling & Resource Governance --- **1. A node is tainted `dedicated=gpu:NoSchedule`. A Pod with no matching toleration is pending and never gets scheduled anywhere else, even though other untainted nodes have free capacity. What's actually going on?** *Answer:* Nothing is wrong — the taint only affects the tainted node specifically; it doesn't explain why the Pod isn't landing elsewhere. If it's stuck pending entirely, the cause is something else (insufficient resources cluster-wide, a nodeSelector/affinity rule that can't be satisfied anywhere) — the taint itself only ever repels from the ONE node it's applied to. --- **2. During a planned node drain for maintenance, would you expect a PodDisruptionBudget to prevent an UNRELATED node from crashing unexpectedly at the same time?** *Answer:* No. A PDB only constrains VOLUNTARY disruptions — operations Kubernetes/an operator controls the timing of, like a drain. An unrelated hardware failure is involuntary and ignores PDBs entirely; nothing is "asking permission" for a crash. --- **3. True or false: a higher-priority pending Pod can cause a lower-priority, already-RUNNING Pod to be evicted to make room.** *Answer:* True — this is what Pod priority/preemption actually does under resource pressure, not just a scheduling hint. Misconfigured priorities can have real, disruptive consequences for this reason. --- **4. A team notices new Pods in their Namespace keep getting created with no CPU/memory requests at all, even though nobody set that intentionally. What governance mechanism would fix this going forward, and what would it NOT fix?** *Answer:* A LimitRange with default requests/limits would apply sensible defaults to future Pods created without explicit values. It would NOT retroactively change Pods that already exist — it only affects new Pod creation from the point it's added. ## Instructor Notes **Facilitation:** Question 2 reinforces a genuinely important, often-missed distinction (voluntary vs. involuntary disruption) — worth confirming it lands, not just that the answer was guessed correctly. **Approximate timing:** 5-7 minutes given the density of this module's lesson.